Cheap food: Is saving money the best reason to eat at home?

Oct 23, 2009 by

“It’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor,” the saying goes.

But according to marketers at Campbell Soup, our benchmark for an “affordable dinner at home” for a family of four is just $10.

The average four-person household, bringing in $49,000 per year, spends $5,700 a year, or $110 a week, or just $5 per meal, for groceries, according to Heinz’s research.

Could cheap food be a reason we’re paying the doctor so much? And why we can expect our kids to pay even more in their future?

How do we profit if we save money today, but lose our health and our children’s health tomorrow?

Double Food Standard

Now I understand the problems of a genuinely tight budget, but where we’re not willing to pay the grocer, we are willing to pay the restaurant. While we choke on paying more than $5 or $10 for the whole family to eat a fresh, tasty,…

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Top 8 things to cut expenses on so you can spend more on quality groceries

Oct 23, 2009 by

  1. Restaurant meals
  2. Soda
  3. Junky snacks
  4. Cable TV
  5. Movies in the theater
  6. Electronic gadgets and video games
  7. New cars
  8. New clothes

Related post: “Reaching the Promised Land: Home Style or Restaurant” Style? https://www.thehappydinnertable.com/2009/09/28/reaching-the-promised-land-home-style-or-restaurant-style/

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To Melissa G., the Recessionary Grocery Shopper: The Official Kid-Will-Eat-It Guidelines

Oct 1, 2009 by

Dear Melissa G.,

Congratulations! You have been named “ground zero for the new austerity” by one of our food industry giants, according to an article I just read in Advertising Age.  Industrial edibles manufacturers, scrambling to keep their profits up while consumers like you look for ways to spend less, are taking a hard look at you, the average grocery shopper, and how you think and behave.  Melissa, you represent today’s Every Mom:  the very picture of the grocery-shopping parent. You are the bull’s eye of the target for processed food manufacturers in this economic downturn.

It’s quite an honor, and a responsibility, a sacred destiny even, Every Mom. The wellbeing of the American child is in your hands.

While Campbell Soup was analyzing your habits and attitudes…

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Hunger: To Fear or Not to Fear?

Dec 19, 2008 by

Children must eat or they will die.  Does that fact scare you or give you a sense of power?

When it comes to eating, in many American families, the children are successfully controlling the fearful parents, who are in turn unsuccessfully trying to control the children.

I heard last week yet another mom complain, “Little Caiden has eaten nothing but tater tots and pickle loaf for the past week.” Another mom sees what I feed my kids and tells me, “My kids would never eat that. How do you get them to eat that?”

All I wonder is: who is furnishing the tater tots and pickle loaf or whatever else that enables a child to refuse perfectly good Real Food and live?  And why?

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When the Appetite Goes, Everything Goes

Dec 7, 2008 by

 
 

 

My French husband’s grandfather, Pierre Migeon, had a saying: “Quand l’appétit va, tout va.”

 

When the appetite goes, everything goes. The meaning is double: when your appetite is gone, you are on the road to disappearance yourself. Or, when your appetite functions well, everything else follows it.

The idea is part of the French view of life and eating. Appetite is sacred. It’s their friend. To start a meal, they really do say to each other, bon appétit! –good appetite. And they mean it.

For Americans, though, the appetite is generally seen as the enemy. Children…

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